A familiar lament in Missouri

I n Missouri today, another African-American mother is mourning the death of her son, who was shot down by the police.

An investigation is underway, but Bob Marley, in "Johnny Was," long ago told us that it was "Just because of the system."

And if you really think about it, it is not too difficult to understand the system, how dehumanizing a group of people for more than 200 years would nurture patterns of behavior that, without meaningful intervention, could persist forever.

No, it is not hard to see how the shackling, whipping, hanging, burning, beating, branding and mutilating of African-Americans during slavery; the selling and the separation of children from their mothers and wives from their husbands; the denial of educational opportunities and the iron fisted demand for subservience — would create psychological profiles that influence lives through generations.

It is easy to understand how institutions that supported and enforced Jim Crow laws would continue to cling to their racism long after that racial caste system had been outlawed.

If you really think about it, the vicious beating Los Angeles police officers meted out to Rodney King, and the subsequent acquittal of the officers by an all-white jury, despite videotaped evidence of the 56 baton and kick blows administered by the officers, is a symptom of that lingering dehumanization.

If you really think about it, the riots and the burning and the looting that followed the Rodney King beating and this latest incident in Missouri, the penchant to destroy their own community, reflect the self-loathing that still haunts so many African-Americans.

And if you really think about it, outside of the hollow plea for forgiveness, which Rodney so plaintively echoed when he asked, "Why can't we all get along," there really haven't been any serious attempts made to heal the nation of its deep, slavery-derived psychological problems.

It is not a stretch to say the emancipation of African-Americans was merely the transplanting of chattel slavery from the cotton plantations to poor ghettos and prison blocks.

The civil rights movement created changes in the law, but not necessarily changes in behavior. And what good are civil rights when, as the Drug Policy Alliance noted recently, "People of color experience discrimination at every stage of the judicial system and are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced and saddled with a lifelong criminal record."

If you are a parent, you probably work overtime trying to convince your children of the value of a good education, of the need for them to make good choices in their lives and the importance of learning how to see greatness in themselves and not allow anyone to make them less than who they are.

For many children these are the keys to a successful life, but to African-American children they are not enough. You have to teach African-American children to ignore the slights that are ordained for them. You have to encourage them to hang on to their dreams, dreams that some will surely try to withhold from them.

If you think about it, life is a game of Russian roulette for the African-American family. The slights are so many, the self-loathing so profound and the injustices so prevalent that any day now another young black man will be needlessly killed and his mother will hold her head and cry.

Yes, if you really think about it, the African-American child survives mainly through luck, rather than through model behavior.